Krauss said, ‘I don’t know if the rumour is solid. If I don’t hear anything in the next two months, I’ll conclude it was false.

‘They will be extremely cautious. There’s no reason for them to make a claim they are not certain of.

‘We would have a new window on the universe. Gravitational waves are generated in the most exotic, strange locations in nature, such as at the edge of black holes at the beginning of time.

‘We are pretty certain they exist, but we’ve not been able to use them to probe the universe.’

Gabriela Gonzalez, of the LIGO collaboration said, ‘The LIGO instruments are still taking data today, and it takes us time to analyse, interpret and review results, so we don’t have any results to share yet.